Man arrested with pipe bombs had a criminal record

A man caught with homemade pipe bombs inside an recreational vehicle parked in Moss Landing on Monday was a registered sex offender with criminal arrests from Santa Cruz County to the Pacific Northwest, records show.

Court filings and other documents show Erik Richard Snyder, 40, was listed as a sex offender in Montana in 2003 and served prison time in Washington state, where he was charged in Spokane with felony failure to register as a sex offender in September 2002.

Early Monday, Monterey County sheriff's deputies found pipe bombs in Snyder's RV in Moss Landing while searching for the vehicle's registration.

Sheriff's officials said they had no idea why Snyder had the bombs, and said his proximity to the Moss Landing Power Plant appears to be coincidental.

Officers spotted the vehicle around 1 a.m. parked on Sandholt Road at Highway 1 and became suspicious. They ran the license plate number and found it belonged to another vehicle.

Snyder, who was inside, told deputies the RV's paperwork was in a lockbox in the vehicle, but when deputies opened the box, they found a lot more than registration and ownership documents.

They discovered five homemade bombs and a loaded revolver.

The sheriff's bomb squad was called in and the team soon rendered the live devices harmless, officials said.

Detectives describe Snyder as a transient, and public records show he has lived in Montana, Washington, Oregon and California over the past two decades.

He has two previous felony convictions in California for drug and firearms charges, a sheriff's official said.

Snyder lived most recently in San Jose, where deputies said restraining orders are filed against him.

He has also lived in Ben Lomond and was arrested in Santa Cruz County in 1994 and 1995, records show.

In 1995, he was also charged in Oregon with switching the license plate on his vehicle.

Snyder was booked into Monterey County Jail on suspicion of felony possession of a destructive device, possessing bomb-making ingredients, and being a felon in possession of ammunition. He also faces a misdemeanor charge of possessing a firearm in violation of a restraining order.